Pixilation is the technique of animating real live actors in stop-motion. As such it is a highly performative as well as strenuous method. Every minute of film can take up to a full day of excruciating micro-movements to compile, requiring of the actor not just endurance but also an analytical awareness of the motions. The show centres around two video pieces made as a collaborative project between myself and filmmaker Nat Tafelmacher-Magnat. The Magician, the most recent fo the two films, consists of three parts and was finished just weeks before the opening. It features an original score composed and performed by contemporary jazz muscician Hada Benedito Mateo.

Apart from the two videos, a series of enlarged frames from the films will be exhibited as digital prints. Furthermore, some of the fantastical costumes used in the videos will also be shown. The costumes were made by a former Romanian art-fashion label Rozalb de Mura, and just like pixilation, they also defy reason and rationality in their inventive and highly impractical use of materials and designs.

For the spring 2017, I participated in SUPERMARKET Art Fair, with four other colleagues from our project space HilbertRaum. Supermarket aims itself specifically at project spaces and non-commercial initiatives, and has since its beginning in 2007 become one of Europe’s most important networking events for the underground scene. For Supermarket, I presented works from my series Home-Defensive.

What will you do when the trespassers come knocking on your door, when the uninvited visitor is already climbing through your window? If you live in the country and have hunting as a hobby, you might already be well prepared, but if you dwell in a cosy house or flat in town or suburb, you might have no idea whatsoever what to do! Maybe you would rush to the kitchen for a meat cleaver, or grab your tennis racket from the wardrobe. But honestly, don’t you think that they come better prepared than that?
No panic, there is a better solution available. Why not invest in superior security as well as in style? Buy an artwork you could kill with! Ultimately, the old swords, shields and halberds that adorn the walls of noble homes are not only there for decoration. For the modern middle class there is now a more elegant alternative, so that no one needs to pretend being a fantasy nerd to be able to feel safe at home. The series Home-Defensive by artist Tobias Sternberg offers a scope of possibilities, for big and small, and in a form that befits the modern home. Does it seem just a little bit bold? Are you wondering what neighbours and guests will think? No worries, it is after all conceptual art, and as everyone knows, the sophisticated person must understand and appreciate irony. Like in this text for example. The artworks are, notwithstanding, still excellently suitable also for their secondary purpose – to defend your home!

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Home Defensive is Tobias Sternberg’s first solo presentation in Sweden.